Variety-seeking is a central issue to consumer behaviour research and a phenomenon of crucial relevance, both for human and animal nutrition. Variety-seeking increases the probability of nutrient adequacy in omnivores, and in humans it may also contribute to obesity epidemic by diversifying food selection and leading to excessive food intake.

Replacing the references to food with ones about information makes for an interesting perspective on the place of tools like Twitter.

Following the tweets of a people from a spectrum of backgrounds and interests provides an "information omnivore" with a variety that would be much more time-consuming to find on one's own. And "increase the probability of informational adequacy" -- with more sources of input, you're less likely to be informationally deficient in a given area.

On the other hand, there's probably a challenge in making sure that it doesn't lead to an "information obesity epidemic" through "excessive data intake" :-)

About Me

Hassan has been involved in driving Web technology and user experience since 1994, developing the world's first dynamic Web site for Sun in 1995, and coining the phrase "Perl is the duct tape of the Internet", among other things.

Now he works primarily with Ruby on Rails while continuing to explore new languages and technologies.